Firefox With Bing Search: Microsoft, Mozilla Announce New Partnership

Microsoft and Mozilla have teamed up to create a new browsing option: A version of the popular Firefox browser will be available for download with Bing as the integrated search engine.

Mozilla announced the partnership in a blog post, describing the new browser as "a customized version of Firefox that sets Bing as the default search engine in the search box and AwesomeBar and makes Bing.com the default home page."

The Bing team, in a blog post, said they are "excited to make it even easier for members of the Mozilla Firefox community to use Bing." Members of the Mozilla Firefox community who do wish to use Bing can download it here, at firefoxwithbing.com

This isn't the first collaboration between Microsoft and Mozilla. In October 2010 Firefox 4 launched with new search bar options for users who preferred to search the web using an engine other than Google; Microsoft's Bing, a little over a year old at that point, was one of those options, along with Yahoo's search, Amazon product search, Wikipedia and eBay.

Though Bing-loving Firefox users had been able to download a Bing Add-On for Firefox to make the Microsoft product their default search engine, or reconfigure the default search engine via Firefox's configuration settings, this new, separate browser makes it much, much easier to use Bing as the default search on Firefox.